Three Bean Salad was formed originally as a dance band with Mike Black on Mandolin, Dayle on Piano and the late Gary Hughes on Fiddle. The most recent line up of Three Bean Salad with Mike Yoder on Guitar was cooked up for the 2004 MandoFest held at the historic Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Kansas. Since then Three Bean Salad has opened up for several top name players such as Mike Marshall, John Reischman, Don Stiernberg & Butch Baldassari. Three Bean Salad has also played for Dance Weekends and instrument workshops.

We began formulating a plan to write a few tunes for Three Bean Salad during the 2005 Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, KS . We had constantly been scouting out new tunes to learn but felt we needed to have a few that were our own. We had fun with our first tunes, so we set a goal to come up with one tune a month. Some months were surprisingly productive and others dry, but we exceeded our goal with 20 tunes in about a year. Plus, we were having a fabulous time creating and trying out tunes on our jamming buddies.

Mike & Dayle have won the 2007 Walnut Valley new song showcase in the Instrumental category for their tune Cowley County Breakdown, Alternate Winner in 2008 for Dan Kessinger's and the 2009 winner for Scratch Box / Scritch & Scratch.

We chose the name Acoustic Potluck for our second CD because of the eclectic mix of styles our tunes have. The tunes are just like the food at a potluck; you never really know what’s going to show up. This collection includes reels, jigs, groove tunes, power tunes, dance sets, and waltzes. We’ll jam on anything: New England, old-timey, Irish, Klezmer or whatever comes up, and our tunes grew out of this musical smorgasbord. Many of these tunes have been successfully contra-dance road-tested: Flint Hills Ride, Digger’s Reel, Window Pain, Biscuits & Gravy, Old Dog, Paddy On the Kaw, Second Shift, Problem Solved, Boiled Okra, and Field Assignment, while others are just for jamming or zoning out. Guitar players tend to enjoy and fear our tunes because they are challenging as well as fun. As one of our friends put it “these tunes make the guitar part of the music, rhythmically as opposed to being just back up.”

Mike Black – Mandolin:

Mike spent a lot of his early years as a heavy metal guitar player, which accounts for his love of power tunes. Mike turned to the mandolin in 1993 after his father got one the year before. In 2004 and 2013 Mike was named the Kansas State Mandolin Champion. Mike plays the mandolin he built for himself while working as an apprentice for Summit Mandolins in 1994. Recently Mike has started building Mandolins and Octave Mandolins under his own name. They can be heard on the Reels & Fakes album. Check out the new page for Black Mandolins.

Dayle Dryer Black – Fiddle:

Dayle grew up singing lots of protest songs while her Dad played guitar and family sang or whistled. Later Dayle received a Masters Degree in Classical Piano. Since a real piano couldn’t easily be packed for camping trips, she picked up the fiddle in the fall of 2003 after her first trip to Winfield and has been rocking out since.

Mike Yoder – Guitar:

Mike Yoder is an award winning photographer as well as songwriter. Mike has won the song writing competition at the Walnut Valley Music festival twice. Mike is also a long time member of the renowned Alferd Packer Memorial String Band. Mike is the chief photographer at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper. Some of his photographs can be seen in the books America 24/7 and Kansas 24/7. Mike finished his own book of photographs for the 100th anniversary of the Vinland Fair. And most recently the winner of the 2008 Phoenix award for his achievement in photography.